In the first chapter of Genesis, we read that God made man—the true identity of you and me—in His image and likeness. But that’s not all. He also gave us dominion over all the earth. While that may be easy to claim in the comfort of an easy chair, it’s a whole different story when facing what appears to be a crisis. What is one to do, for example, when confronted with threats of a raging inferno, powerful flood, serious accident, crippling health challenge, or any other seeming threat?
The Bible is filled with such accounts. But it is also filled with remarkable examples of God’s deliverance, as when David sang, “When the waves of death compassed me, the floods of ungodly men made me afraid; . . . in my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried to my God: and he did hear my voice out of his temple, and my cry did enter into his ears. . . . He sent from above, he took me; he drew me out of many waters; he delivered me from my strong enemy, and from them that hated me” (II Samuel 22:5, 7, 17, 18).
A perusal of biblical accounts leads to a striking revelation: Deliverance from a crisis never begins with a physical action or reaction, but with a mental, prayerful response. The victor is impelled to trustingly turn to God to begin to witness the coincidence of God’s divine influence with the human need. The practical benefit of such a response cannot be overstated. It is summed up this way in the Bible: “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (II Timothy 1:7).
A “sound mind” never concludes that God, the only Mind, is the source of any destructive element. As we learn from studying the Bible and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, the Founder of Christian Science, God is only good and therefore creates only good.
One might ask, though, “Of what use is a sound mind when the crises we face are physical?” It’s everything. It has the potential to still crises. That’s because, as we learn in Christian Science, our experience is actually the projection of consciousness—it is our thought externalized. Mrs. Eddy writes: “Mortal mind sees what it believes as certainly as it believes what it sees. It feels, hears, and sees its own thoughts” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 86).
This is illustrated in the book of Mark in the Bible, where we read that Jesus and his disciples once found themselves engulfed in a violent storm on a boat (see 4:36–41). Buffeted by gale-force winds and threatening waves and fearing for their lives, the disciples awoke Jesus from his sleep and pleaded with him to save them. He stood and “rebuked the wind” and said to the sea, “Peace, be still.” Then “the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.”
We act most sensibly in times of crisis when we handle fear first.
Jesus was in the same boat, on the same lake, at the same time as his disciples. How could he have been asleep? What set him apart from his students was that he was not in the storm in consciousness. The only way to understand Jesus’ peaceful state in the midst of what appeared to be a crisis is to realize that he understood that in reality, in God’s kingdom of perpetual harmony, there could never be a storm.
Mrs. Eddy writes of Jesus, “Let us remember that the great Metaphysician healed the sick, raised the dead, and commanded even the winds and waves, which obeyed him through spiritual ascendency alone” (Message to The Mother Church for 1901, p. 19). His elevated thought, at one with God, included no suggestion of anything not of God, good.
Mrs. Eddy elsewhere writes: “Jesus taught us to walk over, not into or with, the currents of matter, or mortal mind. . . . he commanded the winds, he healed the sick,—all in direct opposition to human philosophy and so-called natural science. He annulled the laws of matter, showing them to be laws of mortal mind, not of God” (Unity of Good, p. 11).
As we follow Jesus’ example, we find that what we entertain in thought before or during a crisis is of utmost importance and directly influences our experience. Whether in advance, when we’re working to disbelieve that there are powers acting contrary to God and His goodness, or when facing dire circumstances and listening closely for God’s dependable guidance rather than allowing ourselves to be gripped with fear, we need to abide in that “spiritual ascendency” that Jesus demonstrated.
I had the opportunity to demonstrate this when facing a crisis. As a young adult, I led a group of teenagers on a high-country backpack trip. A few days into the trek, we found ourselves exposed on a ridge above timberline, when a ferocious storm descended on us quickly and unexpectedly. We raced madly to put up tarps to protect ourselves and our gear from the rain, but the wind was so intense it snapped the tent poles and blew our gear around like tumbleweeds. With lightning dancing around us, it seemed there was no place to take refuge.
Fear appeared to be calling the shots at first, but reaching out to God for help, I got a very clear direction to have everyone lie on the ground side by side in groups, pull tarps over ourselves, stake them down, and wait the storm out. Packed like sardines under our tarps, someone pulled out a Bible and began reading—practically yelling—the twenty-third Psalm out loud. Then others began sharing familiar passages as the book was passed around. It was like a church service on the mountaintop. A sense of calm fell on us and we became less disturbed by the chaos around us.
As I spoke out loud and with conviction, I felt the power of Truth wash over me.
Eventually the storm moved down the valley and the sun broke through the clouds. I hiked to a rocky point where I could observe it and thank God for our deliverance. A few minutes later I realized I wasn’t alone. One by one, the group had gathered around me in quiet reverence. It was a holy experience.
I later learned that our protection had been greater even than I had understood at the time, when I was told that the proper position to take when caught outside in a lightning storm is a crouching position, and that lying flat exposes one to greater danger. But, in fact, we had been protected, not by the position of our bodies, but by the trust in God in our hearts.
We act most sensibly in times of crisis when we handle fear first. “Perfect love casteth out fear,” we read in First John 4:18. Knowing that God knows nothing but love for us and continuously wraps us in His love casts out the fear that we can ever fall out of it. Then we have the soundness of mind to hear God’s angel messages guiding us in the steps we need to take. At some point, we will learn that destructive events, because they’re not of God, have no more reality or ability to harm us than the storm did Jesus and his disciples.
Christian Science teaches the importance of turning from fear in health crises as well. Doing so enables us to maintain the consciousness of truth and avail ourselves more of the omnipotence and omnipresence of God’s goodness. We read in Science and Health, “As human thought changes from one stage to another of conscious pain and painlessness, sorrow and joy,—from fear to hope and from faith to understanding,—the visible manifestation will at last be man governed by Soul, not by material sense” (p. 125).
I experienced proof of this when facing what felt like a bodily crisis. Doing some landscaping work, I cut and removed several armloads of plant trimmings while wearing a sleeveless shirt and shorts. All was fine until that night, when a terrible rash began to spread over much of my body. I later learned that the trimmings had included poison ivy—something I had no experience with, since I had never lived in places where it grew.
The challenge seemed more than I could handle by myself, so I called a Christian Science practitioner to pray with me. I felt some relief immediately, but the real healing didn’t take place until a few days later.
I was walking alone, reveling in the fact that the irritation had subsided to the point where I felt as though the challenge was almost over. But at that moment, there was an onset of symptoms again, this time more aggressive. It felt like a personal crisis, for sure. But I had just been reading this in Science and Health: “Mind is the master of the corporeal senses, and can conquer sickness, sin, and death. Exercise this God-given authority. Take possession of your body, and govern its feeling and action. Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good. God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed on man” (p. 393).
With this truth in hand, I spoke with authority to the suggestion that a rash had any power over me, or even existed. I spoke out loud and with conviction. As I did so, I felt the power of divine Truth and Love wash over me. Instantly, the irritation and other symptoms stopped—purely from my speaking the truth with conviction. And they never came back.
The Apostle Paul said, “(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (II Corinthians 10:4, 5). This is truly what a sound mind does. Its thoughts are in alignment with, or obedience to, Christ, the true idea of God. This enables us to awake to God’s omnipresence and omnipotence.
We will one day discover that we can have a sound mind in every circumstance. It is naturally ours, since we are God’s image. He gives us the ability to feel His omnipotence reign in our consciousness, and therefore in our experience. This is accompanied by the peaceful assurance that God’s spiritual creation—the only creation there actually is—is intact, unchangeable, harmonious, and at hand to be seen.
